The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXIV, Part 1-2, 1976 - Khamkoo

THE AYUDDHAYA PERIOD EAUTHENWARES, 197
Bangkok foreigner's market, the kuat din earthenware water fattier
are now being fitted with cast silver stoppers some of which are made
in the shape of the ever. popular Chiang Mai Elephant.
These lovely water bottles are now shipped to Bangkok by rail, and,
as one may readily assume, it is nowadays easier to find one of these
pieces for sale in the art and curio shops that line Bangkok's New Road
or the Oriental Hotel Lane, than in Chiang Mai, where one must generally
search out the kilns that make them.
A few of the shops in Chiang Mai,
however, now do have these supernal bottles for sale, along with bolts
of Thai silk and carved teakwood elephants. They are usually lnferior
pieces, however, as all the better grade ChiangMai kuat din are sent to
the more lucrative Bangkok market.
In the old days almost every northern Thai household had a number
of these kuat di~1 about the home i~ which to store and have available
cool· drinking water. In. fact, there was ~ustomarily a special roofed
shelf set at one side of the hou~e's ope~,· ~pper storey varandah, where
rows of these bottles were placed to catch the benefit of every passing
breeze and thereby keep their drinkingwater delightfully cool.
Many times when truvelling about in the North of Siam during the
hotdry season, it was always a refreshingly pleflsant experience to have
a drink of really fresh, cold water from one of these bottles when stop~
ping to rest at some .farmhouse or at the salawat of some quiet monastery.
No drinking water ever· tasted so good or so refreshing, for there
is something almost magical about the capacity of a porous, unglazed
piece of ~arthenware to keep dri:nking water fre!lh anP, cool tbat no
modern technology can match witl:l a thermos bottle. or ordinary ice
water.
'
These same bottles. are also manu(aptured in the Shan States of
Burma,.andi can pleasantly recall once when stopping at the dak buJ;~galow
in Lashio to find that the house's Indian "butler'', as those grasping
worthies were .customarily called, had placed a Shan-made !mat din with